Four Seasons…March

(FYI – this story has a couple of naughty words.)

Libby wasn’t used to feeling so anxious. The sensation bubbled beneath her skin like a still sizzling burn.

Libby was normally lucky, though not with the usual off the shelf fluke or fortune. Libby was the luckiest person that she, or anybody who knew her, had ever met. By the time she was ten, the word luck had gone forever out of style behind the walls of her family’s small suburban home. Whenever her mother, father, or younger brother Hunter did anything which struck them as even slightly fortuitous, they branded themselves as having pulled off a Libby.

Libby didn’t understand until many years later, exactly how begrudging the compliment was.

Though she had no hard evidence, Libby was fairly certain she understood why good fortune found her so easily. She knew what she believed. For Libby, that was enough.

Libby had a few memories which looped in her mind’s eye like reruns of a favorite show. One of these included she and her mother sitting around the breakfast table about a month after she’d started Kindergarten. Libby was just old enough to be sure there was a difference between right and wrong, yet young enough to feel confusion about the countless degrees which lay between.

Libby had asked her mother about the Golden Rule, a term she heard used by a teacher just outside the Kindergarten fence while disciplining one of the older “graders.” Libby thought the rule sounded awfully pretty, as though it might be a law intended only for royalty.  The real answer, she discovered, was even better.

“The Golden Rule,” her mother had said, “is the most important rule of all.”

“What is it?” Libby felt new excitement thicken her blood.

“The Golden Rule,” her mother smiled, “says that you must do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you must treat other people the way you want to be treated. If you expect to have your share of good things happen, then you must make sure you do your part to make good things happen for other people.”

Libby’s mother cut the crust from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and smiled at her daughter’s wide eyes. She could have no idea how that one simple sentence would shape the next two and a half decades of her daughter’s life.

Libby’s parents naturally assumed credit for the kindhearted angel their youngest daughter turned out to be. The truth was, for Libby, life was simple math. She wanted things to go well and was fortunate enough to stumble upon a formula that worked, at least for her, at an age when nudging idea into habit was as natural as skipping.

Libby never lied, and soon discovered that others found it difficult to be dishonest in her presence. She always said her please and thank you and never failed to mean it. Adults appreciated her manners and rewarded her accordingly. Libby always held doors, blessed sneezes and was careful not to waste.

Libby often found herself with more than enough of whatever she needed, plenty of blessings whenever she sneezed, and wide open doors, no matter how full her hands happened to be.

Since things generally went Libby’s way, it was difficult to find her in anything less than a sterling mood. Needless to say, her good humor was infectious. Those orbiting around Libby often found it difficult to keep the smiles from their faces.

By the time Libby left childhood behind, simple habit had evolved into the core of her personality. She could never be accused of expecting things to go her way, at least not exactly, but Libby somehow understood that if she continued to do as she always had, things would likely unfold in her favor.

Mostly this worked, which is why March was so surprising.

March was the month of Libby’s birthday as well as her best friend Dean’s, and normally one of her favorite times of the year. But the first two days of this one, so far, had brought her nothing but misery. Instead of bidding adieu to winter, smelling the first of the spring bulbs, and casually trying to stay one step ahead of the sporadic showers of early spring, Libby was in full crisis management.

It was on the first of the month when Libby merged onto the freeway just as her cell phone trumpeted the opening notes to When The Saints Come Marching In, a ringing reminder of her semi-regular tradition of meeting Dean in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Libby ignored the call and allowed the familiar notes to bounce against the walls of her purse. It was one of her ironclad rules that she never answer the phone while driving. She never wanted to be one of those people.

The phone rang through Saints for four bars without a belated beep to signal she had a message. After a minute, the phone rang again. Libby continued to ignore it, both that time and the next, but by the time the phone was singing its song for the fourth time in a row she was dead certain there was an emergency.

Libby flicked on her blinker and edged across four lanes of traffic. She missed the call, but pulled the phone from her purse and stayed on the side of the road with the phone sitting in her lap, engine running, waiting for it to ring again.

Fifteen minutes passed. The phone remained silent.

Libby tossed the cell on the passenger seat and merged back onto the freeway, slightly agitated. She passed two exits, pulled off on the third, swung into the grocery store parking lot, killed the engine, then picked up the phone just as it started to ring.

She looked at the small, lit window – PRIVATE CALLER.

“Hello,” Libby said, flipping open the phone, her voice flirting at the edge of frantic. The sounds which bled from the tiny speaker were definitely words, but hushed, far off and broken.

“Bear, thigh, mar…”

“You have to speak louder. I can’t hear you.”

“Bear, thigh, mar,” she heard the voice, creaking in barely a whisper.

“I can’t hear you,” she repeated.

“Bear, thigh, mar…” was followed by the tundra of a dead connection.

Libby left the car and scurried through the grocery store tossing items in her cart without giving thought to need. Sinister thoughts circled her brain as she imagined who might be trying to reach her and their possible distress.

The mystery caller was so muffled that it was difficult to determine gender, but Libby’s thoughts drifted almost involuntarily to her mother. She imagined her mom alone and helpless, her father still at work. Libby flipped open the phone, pressed #3 and heard the automatic dial of seven digits.

“Mom,” she said before her mom could say hello.

“Libby?”

“Yes, Mom, it’s me. Is everything okay?”

“Of course,” she said, “you called me. You’ve got that thing in your voice, everything alright?”

Libby started to explain, but stopped at the realization of how ridiculous she likely sounded. “It’s nothing Mom, just had one of those feelings like there might be something wrong. Know what I mean?”

“Oh yes, just wait till you’re a mom. You’ll get them all the time.”

Libby didn’t bother with a sorry Mom, but that won’t be happening any time soon. Instead she said good-bye, closed the phone and tried to calm herself.

Why was she was getting so worked up over a wrong phone number?

An hour passed. The phone stayed silent and Libby started to believe the incident would just become one of things she would be happy to never think of again. That was when the saints began to march.

“Hello.” Silence.

“Hello…hello…HELLO!”

“Bear, thigh, mar.” Silence.

Libby’s heart was racing. If there was an emergency, Libby was terrified. If the calls were a joke, she wasn’t laughing.

Dean! Libby wondered what took her so long.

Of course it was Dean. This was exactly the type of thing he would think was hysterical. And the more upset she got, the funnier he’d find it.

But what if it wasn’t?

Libby checked the messages on her phone a final time, though the phone’s icon clearly showed an empty mailbox, then slid the phone into her back pocket and walked toward her car at twice her normal speed, more agitated than she could remember feeling in who knows how long. She was so deep in her manufactured distress, Libby missed the old man standing beside her car until she was nearly on top of him.

A tiny, hunched over creature with no more than seven teeth, counting both rows. “Can you spare a bit of change?” he whistled. “Anything helps.”

Libby then did something entirely out of character. “Why don’t you just get a job?” she barked, opening her door and slamming it behind her.

Libby cranked the radio, as if she were mad at her ears instead of herself, then stained the pavement on the way out of the lot. She had said nothing to the old man she didn’t believe, but did said it in a way that brought a wave of acid to the surface of her stomach. Whenever someone asked Libby for money, she’d simply shake her head, politely say no, and silently think to herself, if you can ask me for money, you can ask me if I’m ready to order.

Part of her credo, you couldn’t expect to receive if you were never willing to give.

A sudden boom beneath the hood, followed by a rapid whirring, caused Libby to pull to the side of the road.

Libby turned the ignition…nothing.

She tried again…nothing.

Libby slapped her hands on the steering wheel, exited the car, then slammed the door, suddenly angry. She went inside the corner liquor store without really knowing why. She bought a cold Coke then sat in the car on the verge of tears, hating herself for getting so worked up over nothing, convinced she’d killed the car with anxiety.

She took a deep breath and turned the key again. The car flirted with life, then finally rolled over in triumph. She smiled, pulled into traffic, and drove the remaining four miles home in silence.

“What the hell happened to you?” Paige said as she walked through the door. The expression on her roommate’s face told Libby more than she wanted to know.

“Nothing,” she said. Libby went to her bedroom, quietly closed the door and fell deep to dreaming fifteen minutes later.

________

Libby opened her eyes to narrow slats of March sunlight spilling across her face. She felt along the nightstand for her phone, grabbed it, then flipped it open to check the messages. Four missed calls, one message.

“Hey there Liberator,” Dean’s boyish voice whispered in her ear, “was just checking on you since you stopped answering your phone. Was just fucking with you, you know. Hope you didn’t get all frantic and shit like the time with the police tape.” After a long pause Dean finished. “Anyway, just thought I’d get a head start this year. Sorry if I stressed you.”

Libby didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She couldn’t believe she’d missed the obvious.

Bear, thigh, mar. Beware the Ides of March.

Each year since their sophomore year of high school English when they were forced to read Shakespeare’s “Julius Ceasar,” she and Dean had exchanged their version of April Fool’s two weeks early. The practical jokes had started out fairly low rent, but since they were now separated by thousands of miles with each of them occupying a different coast, the pranks had grown increasingly outlandish, especially since Dean’s bank account had started to balloon. In the past decade or so he’d had her trash pick-up cancelled and email account hacked, with a series of increasingly bizarre messages sent throughout the day. Two years back, Dean had paid someone to break into her apartment and knock a bunch of stuff over, then seal the door with yellow police tape. Since Libby hadn’t seen even the slightest bit of humor in that particular bit of jest, Dean had lobbed a softball the following year. Still, she couldn’t believe she’d missed the obvious.

Libby closed the phone and looked at the time. Shit! She’d overslept by almost an hour and a half. Libby felt something in her stomach that felt suspiciously like worry and hoped the braid of bad luck which had started the day before was finished.

It wasn’t.

Though Libby raced through her morning routine, skipping both exercise and her usual shower, a car that wouldn’t start forced her to call a cab.

When she arrived to work thirty minutes late, for the first time ever and with bloodshot eyes no less, her boss (along with everyone else in her office) was not only understanding, but entirely sympathetic. “You look like someone found you in the bottom of a well.” Her boss may have been an asshole, but it was hard to argue with the obvious.

The overhead fluorescents seemed to sap her energy more than usual and cause her temples to throb in a way they never had before. By mid-morning, the disquiet in Libby’s stomach erupted into full blown distress. She used her lunch hour to collect herself, picking at a carton of white rice from The Golden Bowl, the Chinese take-out in the ground floor of her office, and wondering what the hell was wrong with her.

The white rice seemed to settle her stomach and Libby returned to her desk forty minutes later feeling closer to the girl she knew than the one she’d been living in for the last eighteen hours.

Her reprieve was short.

Libby was sitting at her desk for 10 minutes when the rice rose like a tide in her stomach. She barely made it to the bathroom before losing it, and the Nutri-Grain bar she’d swallowed on the way to work. Libby bent over the bowl heaving for several minutes, until her throat finally surrendered with a few last arid barks. She steadied herself against a stall, then went to the sink and splashed cold water on her hot cheeks.

Libby left the bathroom and slipped inside her boss’s office. “I need to go home,” she said without apology.

Her boss took one look at the bleached sheet of her face and declined to argue. “Take care of yourself,” he said, offering a weak smile.

Halfway down the office park stairs, Libby saw a cab pulling to the curb beside a sharply dressed man in spectacles. Libby felt the acid in her stomach and ran to the taxi. Before the waiting man could tuck his folded newspaper under his arm, and despite the fact that every ounce of her knew it was wrong, Libby swooped inside the back seat of the idling cab and barked her address at the confused driver.

“Whatever you say, lady.” The cabbie pulled from the curb. Libby rolled down the window and hollered an apology at the man standing too irate and dumbfounded to hear a word she was saying.

Can you spare a bit of change? Anything helps.

From nowhere, the panhandler’s words roosted in her mind. Maybe whatever was happening to her was psychosomatic, maybe not. There was no doubt, however, it hadn’t started with Dean’s phone call. It started with her pushing past the old man and slamming the door.

“Take me to Lansing’s Market, on the corner of Third and Locust,” Libby said to the driver, just as he was pulling a right onto her street. He shook his head, made a U-Turn, and seven minutes later, Libby was paying the fare (along with a substantial tip) and looking around the parking lot for an a tiny man with no more than seven teeth, counting both rows.

She didn’t see the old man, but then again she knew it wasn’t really about him. Libby spent the rest of the afternoon living the life of the slightly insane: helping old ladies with their groceries, passing warm greetings to an endless procession of strangers, and looking out for sad eyes to possibly brighten. Sometime between slightly dark and dark enough to feel danger, Libby’s phone started to ring.

“Hello.”

“Hiya, Lib.”

“Fuck you,” Libby laughed at the sound of Dean’s voice.

“Hey, no need to be so harsh.”

“You’ve no idea.”

“Sorry,” Dean said. “I heard the stress in your voice after the last call, but was sure you’d figure it out. My phone quit on me. By the time I got to a charger you were incommunicado.”

“Weird shit, Dean.”

“What, my heavy breathing?”

“No, though I guess that might be a part of it. Since your call yesterday, life’s crapped all over me.”

“Oh?”

Libby could imagine Dean collapsing into his oversized leather chair, ready for another long yarn from his best friend Libby. She was perfectly happy to comply. Libby leaned against the plastic carousel designed to rob parents of their quarters two at a time and spent the next half hour telling her oldest friend about her day of misadventure.

“All in your head, Little Miss Muffet.”

“My car wouldn’t start. That’s a fact.”

“Hey, you’re the one always talking about all that Law of Attraction bullshit. Sorry sweetie, but what covers the back covers the belly.”

Libby wasn’t fond of most of Dean’s designed on the spot cliches which barely made sense, but she always knew what he meant and they usually made her feel better. There was no arguing, after thirty minutes of conversation the smile on her face had returned and the ache in her stomach faded. “Well, I better go. I need to eat, totally running on an empty tank here.”

“Alrighty then, happy birthday.”

“You too,” Libby said, “but we’ll talk before then.”

“I know, but happy birthday anyway. Later later, Libinator.”

Libby closed the phone, dropped it in her purse, then headed toward the market entrance. Barely paying attention, she collided with another soul seemingly in a world of his own.

“I…I”m sorry,” the startled man stuttered.

“It’s okay,” Libby laughed. “Believe me, I’ve been a space cadet all day.”

Their eyes met and Libby felt a burning at the bottom of her ears. “Do I know you?” she asked the large man with the broad shoulders and long face, a scar marring the upper cheekbone, matching the smaller one just above his eye.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Libby didn’t think so either, but she didn’t want the man to leave. It wasn’t him she recognized, exactly. It was the look on his face, a particular brew of sad and lonely she’d seen before. To Libby it was like dead skin, easily sloughed, and something told her she was the one to do it. “You sure?” Her smile was playful, her eyes inviting.

The man shook his head. “Maybe I wrote you a ticket once.” He laughed, a slightly uncomfortable half-tremor.

“Your a cop?”

“I was,” his eyes suddenly on her shoes.

“Get busted by Internal Affairs for taking too many payouts?” Libby winked.

“You’ve seen too many movies.” He cleared his throat, then, “I guess I’m still a cop, just taking some time off.”

“Oh.”

Silence squeezed life from the moment. The man said, “Well, it was nice to meet you, Miss, have a good night and drive safe.” He nodded, then stepped past her toward the dark parking lot.

“Wait.” Not knowing what she was doing, or even why, Libby pulled on the end of the man’s plaid button-up. He turned around, question marks in his eyes meeting the ones in hers. “We haven’t met yet,” she held out her hand. “I’m Libby.”

The man moved the paper bag nestled in the crook of his right arm to the crook of his left and met her hand. “I’m Carl,” he said. “It’s good to meet you.”

“You married, Carl?” Libby swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Not exactly.” A haunted sorrow filled his eyes.

“Had dinner yet?” Not waiting for an answer, she added, “I haven’t eaten all day and was just going inside to sit down and have a sandwich. Care to join me?”

“I don’t think I… No,” he looked away. “I don’t think I should.”

“Carl?”

“Yeah…”

“You don’t look happy.” She was sorry the second she said it; something in Carl looked like it was about to shatter. “All I mean is, sometimes the loneliness can be too much, you know? Sit with me, Carl, just long enough for a sandwich. That’s all I’m asking. We can talk about fun stuff, like how the world can be pretty shitty, and how we can each do our little part to change it.” She saw the look on his face then added with her brightest smile, “Not to be too cornball or anything.”

Carl’s face softened. “That sounds nice, let me just set these in the car. I’ll be right back.”

Libby beamed. “Sounds great, I’ll be waiting.”

Carl crossed the lot. Libby took the phone from her purse, killed the power, and dropped it back inside.

Writer Dad

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